Thanks to Marc Quigley all
of my newsletters are placed properly in OMNI’s web site.

What’s at
stake: “China has experienced very little except humiliation and defeat
in its relations with the West” (J. William Fulbright, 1966). China’s
rise is not occurring at the expense of the United States (Donald Gross), and
China is not threatening the US militarily, but the reverse is true.

“A classic. . . . No American should be able to read [this book] without
weeping at his country’s arrogance.”—Anthony Lewis, New York Times

During the Vietnam War the United States government waged a massive, secret air
war in neighboring Laos. Fred Branfman, an educational advisor living in Laos
at the time, interviewed over 1,000 Laotian survivors. Shocked by what he
heard and saw, he urged them to record their experiences in essays, poems,
and pictures. Voices from the Plain of Jars was the result
of that effort.

When first published in 1972, this book was instrumental in exposing the
bombing. In this expanded edition, Branfman follows the story forward in
time, describing the hardships that Laotians faced after the war when they
returned to find their farm fields littered with cluster munitions—explosives
that continue to maim and kill today.

“Today, the significance of this book’s message has, if anything, increased.
As Fred Branfman predicted with uncommon prescience, the massive U.S. bombing
of Laos during the Vietnam War marked the advent of a new kind of
warfare—automated, aerial, and secret—that is just now emerging as the
dominant means of projecting U.S. power worldwide.”
—Alfred W. McCoy, author of Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine
of Coercive Interrogation Fred
Branfman (1942–2014)
was a writer and activist on issues of peace and climate change who lived in
Santa Barbara, California, and in Budapest.

After his passing, the New
York Times published an extendedobituary reflecting
upon the role of this book in his life's work as a peace activist.

Media & bookseller inquiries regarding review copies, events, and
interviews can be directed to the publicity department at publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu or
(608) 263-0734. (If you want to examine a book for possible course use,
please see Course Books in the left sidebar. If you want to examine a book
for possible rights licensing, please see Rights & Permissions in the
left sidebar.)

Of
Related Interest:Viêt NamBorderless
HistoriesEdited by Nhung Tuyet Tran and Anthony Reid
"Vitally important not only for Vietnamese studies, but also for
broader efforts in Southeast Asian studies to recover the pluralities and
fluidities of the past. This volume makes a convincing case for the
emergence of a real generational and analytical shift in the
field."—Mark Philip Bradley, Northwestern University

“[In Laos,] where a
right-wing government installed by the CIA faced a rebellion, one of the most
beautiful areas in the world, the Plain of Jars, was being destroyed by
bombing. This was not reported by the government or the press, but an
American who lived in Laos, Fred Branfman, told the story in his book Voices
from the Plain of Jars.”—Howard
Zinn, A People’s History of the United States

“In this small, shattering book we hear—as we are so rarely able to
do—the voices of Asian peasants describing what we can barely begin to
imagine.”
—Gloria Emerson, New York Review of Books

Prior edition: Harper & Row USA, 1972, Paper ISBN
0-060-903

Trans-Pacific Partnership

Public Citizen vs. TPP

To Dick, 10-28-14

Negotiations in Australia, aimed at hatching a final
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal, came to a close earlier this week. Given
the extreme secrecy of the process,
there is no way for the public, Congress or the press to find out what really
happened.

Supporters of the dangerous 12-nation deal are using terms like
“endgame,” “breakthrough” and “finish line.” We’ve heard this spin before. But
thanks to growing opposition, TPP deadlines in 2012 and 2013 were missed.

We know that a lot of TPP issues seem to be unresolved. But we
also know that very bad deals often get done in secrecy when the pressure to
make a deal — any deal — is on. We can’t afford to wait and see.

The outstanding issues will decide if the medicine we need is
affordable, if more devastating financial crises are in our future and if
corporations can use investor-state panels to attack our laws and raid our
governments’ treasuries.

The best thing we can do is to make sure that IF there ever is a
finished TPP, there won’t be any Fast
Track to railroad it through Congress.

Take action now. Email your representative to say “no” to
fast-tracking the TPP.

President Barack Obama wants to announce a TPP deal when he’s in
Asia for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in mid-November. So U.S.
negotiators are looking to finalize the 12-country deal despite mounting
evidence that this dangerous corporate fantasy should not be completed — now or
ever.

As negotiators rush to meet Obama’s arbitrary deadline, some
members of Congress are seeking to revive Fast Track in the upcoming lame-duck
session after the elections.

Fast Track would allow the president to sign the TPP without
congressional approval and then railroad the deal through Congress in only 90
days with limited debate and no amendments. Congress — which has constitutional
authority over trade — would be forced into an up-or-down vote on the TPP with
no opportunity to change the dangerous parts of the deal.

Some members of Congress are working on a replacement for Fast
Track, a so-called “Smart Track.” It is not yet clear if this will be the real
Fast Track replacement we so desperately need, or just another anti-democratic
Fast Track in disguise.

A real replacement for Fast Track would guarantee Congress a
steering wheel and an emergency brake for runaway “trade” deals. For example,
Congress should be able to vote to approve an agreement before it is signed by
the president.

Stay informed and speak out when it counts. Sign up for the
Public Citizen Action Network or other online announcements. If you do not wish
to receive e-mail messages from Public Citizen in the future, please click
here.

Public Citizen employees are members of SEIU Local 500. We
support the right of workers in the United States and around the world to
organize freely. Union Yes!

Remember NAFTA? The trade
agreement that sent thousands of jobs overseas and drove down wages at home?

Imagine NAFTA on steroids
and you get the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). The TPP will make it
easier for corporations to ship job overseas, roll back Wall Street reforms,
and drive up the costs of medicines.

President Obama is asking
for "fast-track" authority from Congress to quickly pass the
agreement with limited debate.But members of Congress don't even know what's in it! The deal
has been kept secret, accessible only to corporations and heads of state.

The TPP was written in
secret by advisers from some of the largest multinational corporate
conglomerations in the Western hemisphere.

Even members of Congress
haven't been given access to the entire 29-chapter document! President Obama is
hoping to "fast track" it through Congress with a quick up or down
vote before they get a chance.

We need to make sure
Congress knows we stand against secret policies that hurt working people.

1/25/2015
Gmail ­ Tell Washington to oppose the Trans­Pacific Trade Partnership agreement
(TPP)
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=dd75a4efec&view=pt&search=inbox&th=14b1f44afd1dec04&siml=14b1f44afd1dec04&siml=14b1f44b38080e71
1/2 Dick Bennett Tell Washington to oppose the Trans­Pacific Trade Partnership
agreement (TPP) 2 messages Progressive Secretary Sat, Jan 24, 2015 at 10:06 PM
Reply­To: "actionreply@progressivesecretary.org" To: "James R.
Bennett" Dear Dick, Here is a new Progressive Secretary letter. This
letter supports campaigns by many organizations opposing the Trans­Pacific
Partnership (TPP) trade agreement. The treaty allows corporations to sue
governments in trade tribunals for expected "lost profits." These
"tribunals" aren't US courts. They're international arbitration
tribunals and they're empowered to award massive payments to corporations.
Anything done in the public interest is likely to result in "lost
profits." That means that a tribunal ruling allows foreign corporations to
override our laws. Oppose this treaty by sending a letter to the President and
to the Senate. The Senate must reject the Trans­Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade
agreement (treaty). With the assistance of 600 corporate advisers, the
administration negotiated the TPP secretly, ignoring Congress and the American
people. Former Trade Representative Ron Kirk said that if Americans knew what
was in it, they would oppose the agreement. And no wonder. The TPP — the biggest corporate power grab in history— will allow corporations to overturn
laws that protect the public and the environment if those laws result in lost
(corporate) profits. The TPP will hurt American manufacturing, guaranteeing
that the USA treat businesses incorporated in TPP countries equally with U.S.
firms when bidding on government contracts. Like NAFTA, the TPP will drive down
wages. Please show your allegiance to the people you represent. Stop the TPP.
Click here to send this letter or to learn more (you can edit the subject or
the letter itself in the next step, if you wish).1/25/2015 Gmail ­ Tell
Washington to oppose the Trans­Pacific Trade Partnership agreement (TPP)
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=dd75a4efec&view=pt&search=inbox&th=14b1f44afd1dec04&siml=14b1f44afd1dec04&siml=14b1f44b38080e71
2/2 To ask friends to sign this letter, forward this link (doesn't contain your
personal contact information):
http://action.progressivesecretary.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?
action_KEY=10838 Sincerely, Kathie Turner, Executive Director Be a Fan on Facebook
| Follow us on Twitter Want to make Progressive Secretary even better? Suggest
a letter | Recruit a Friend Donate | Volunteer Progressive Secretary Sat, Jan
24, 2015 at 10:06 PM Reply­To: actionreply@progressivesecretary.org To:
j.dick.bennett@gmail.com [Quoted text hidden]

CHINA

AVOIDING WAR WITH CHINA

J. William Fulbright Testifies on
China and Vietnam
1966

[United States senator J. William
Fulbright of Arkansas supported the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which
allowed President Lyndon Johnson to expand U.S. military involvement in the
Vietnam War (1959-1975). But Fulbright had begun to question the U.S. role in
the war by 1966 when he testified at Senate Foreign Relations Committee
hearings on U.S. policy toward China and Vietnam. Fulbright, who was chairman
of the committee, warned that U.S. engagement in Vietnam could lead to a war
with China. --Dick]

J. William Fulbright Testifies on
China and Vietnam
1966

China has experienced very little except humiliation and defeat
in its relations with the West, including Russia and, to some degree, America.
One of our leading Chinese scholars, Prof. John K. Fairbank, who is the
director of the East Asian Research Center of Harvard University, believes that
the rapacious behavior of Europeans in China in past centuries has a great deal
to do with the irrationality and hostile behavior of China's current leaders.

Words like "extraterritoriality" and "unequal
treaties" are far too antiseptic, too bland, to describe China's
humiliation by Western imperialism. In human terms, the coming of Western
civilization to China in the nineteenth century meant the plundering of China's
wealth by foreigners and the reduction of most of the Chinese to an inferior
status within their own country. Missionaries were immune from Chinese law and
treated the Chinese as heathen, except, of course, for the converts who also
claimed immunity from Chinese law and used the power conferred by their foreign
association to intimidate their fellow citizens. Foreign goods were exempted by
treaty from internal toll taxes imposed by the Manchu Dynasty to pay for the
Taiping rebellion of the mid-19th century, with the result that Western
companies destroyed their Chinese competitors in the sale of such products as
timber, oil, tobacco and, of course, opium. Each of China’s disastrous
nineteenth century wars with the West was followed by the levy of a huge
indemnity or some further incursion on the economic life of the country.

It is of great importance that we try to learn something more
about the strange and fascinating Chinese nation, about its past and its
present, about the aims of its leaders and the aspirations of its people.
Before we can make wise political -- and perhaps military -- decisions
pertaining to China, there are many questions to be asked and, hopefully,
answered: What kind of people are the Chinese? To what extent are they
motivated by national feeling? To what extent by ideology? Why are the Chinese
Communist leaders so hostile to the United States and why do they advocate violent
revolution against most of the world's governments? To what extent is their
view of the world distorted by isolation and the memory of ancient grievances?
To what extent, and with what effect on their Government, do the Chinese people
share with us and with all other peoples what Aldous Huxley has called the
simple human preference for life and peace?

We need to ask these questions because China and America may be
heading toward war with each other and it is essential that we do all that can
be done to prevent that calamity, starting with a concerted effort to
understand the Chinese people and their leaders.

The danger of war is real. It is real because China is ruled by
ideological dogmatists who will soon have nuclear weapons at their disposal and
who, though far more ferocious in words than in actions, nonetheless are
intensely hostile to the United States. In the short run the danger of war
between China and America is real because an "open-ended" war in
Viet-Nam can bring the two great powers into conflict with each other, by
accident or by design, at almost any time. Some of our military experts are
confident that China will not enter the war in Viet-Nam; their confidence would
be more reassuring if it did not bring to mind the predictions of military
experts in 1950 that China would not enter the Korean war, as well as more
recent predictions about an early victory in Viet-Nam. In fact, it is the view
of certain China experts in our Government that the Chinese leaders themselves
expect to be at war with the United States within a year, and it is clear that
some of our own officials also expect a war with China.

Our ultimate objective must, of course, be political: the
prevention of war between China and America. At present there appears to be a
growing expectation of war in both countries and, as Professor [Gordon W.]
Allport points out, "what people expect determines their behavior."
Perhaps a concerted effort to increase our understanding of China and the
Chinese would alter that fatal expectancy, and perhaps if our expectations were
altered theirs too would change. It is anything but a sure thing but,
considering the stakes and considering the alternative, it seems worth a try.

The Chinese today, like Americans a hundred years ago, are in an
agitated and abnormal state of mind. It is not only within our means but, as a
great and mature Nation, it is our responsibility, as [United Nations Secretary
General] U Thant so wisely pointed out, to try to understand the causes of
China's agitation and to try to find some remedy.

A similar version from Brisbane,
Australia, was published in the Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette (Nov. 16, 2014), from which I am quoting, “Obama, Allies
Discuss Pacific-Region Security.”

Pace: “Eyeing Chinese
aggression, President Barack Obama and the prime ministers of Japan and
Australia committed today to deepen their military cooperation and work
together on strengthening maritime security in the Asia Pacific.”

Chinese aggression? For
example? (Pace here using the language
of the military triumvirate. See
later.) Rather, the US has moved across the Pacific
Ocean relentlessly expanding its bases closer and closer until surrounding
China: Hawaii, Guam (a super-size
carrier battle group) , Philippines, Japan (Okinawa the firepower of 10 carrier
battle groups, which the US also has roaming the seas, China not yet one),
South Korea (Jeju Island)—pan-Asian military treaties to contain “Chinese
aggression.” And now three agree to
“’deepen the already strong security and defense cooperation,’” now tightening
the drawstring with Japan to the north and Australia to the South, both already
firm allies with the US against the fearsome foe, but there can never be enough
reassuring threatening control for the pathologically insecure.

Pace: Asia Pacific is “a
region rife with disputes between China and its neighbors over claims to waters
and islands.”

What is the threat? What
is China’s role, President Obama asked in a speech a the University of
Queensland? “By virtue of its size and
its remarkable growth. . ..”? Where’s
the aggression in that?

Pace: “The president has tried to show the region’s leaders that
he retained the ability to deliver on promises to deepen U.S. engagement in
Asia and the Pacific, an effort he sees as a central part of his foreign
policy.”

By this point in the report we realize how much a euphemism is
the word “deepen.” President Obama is
referring to unimaginably massive weaponry and surveillance throughout the
Pacific and East Asia. And who makes US
foreign policy by the way? And what
should be said regarding the dangerously unrestrained growth of the US president’s
power since the beginning of WWII?

Pace: Quoting Obama:
“’There are times when people have been skeptical of this rebalance, they’re
wondering whether America has the staying power to sustain it.’” Rebalance?!
The statement is so blatantly self-deluding or deliberately deluding the
US public that surely Pace, if she has studied this subject, later wondered
about her staying power.

Pace: Quoting Obama
again: “’I’m here to say that American
leadership in the Asia Pacific will always be a fundamental focus of my foreign
policy.” Now I wonder about the staying
power of the Asian leaders, so arrogant is this statement. But of course, given “Beijing’s provocative
actions in territorial disputes in waters off its borders” (Pace), US
leadership is necessary?
Provocative? Example? “The conflict between China and Japan over a
string of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. . . .”

Reporting a meeting of three biased participants led by the
leader of the one super-power, Pace could write and quote no differently; she
could not editorialize, in her own voice at least. But she could have followed the fundamental
training and practice of journalists, of reporting both sides. How do Chinese leaders respond to Obama’s
statements? How do opposition leaders in
Australia and Japan? How do opponents in
the US? Of course, she was writing
against a deadline, but that is a feeble excuse for accepting a puppet’s role.

The China Fallacy:

How the U.S. Can Benefit from
China's Rise and Avoid Another Cold War by Donald Gross

Published: 11-08-2012

Tell others about this book

About The China Fallacy

American critics who deeply fear a "China threat" have
unduly influenced government policy. "China hawks" believe China
intends to push the United States out of Asia and dominate the world.
Protectionists argue that China threatens American jobs and prosperity.

This authoritative work examines why and how the U.S. should
stabilize and improve its relations with China. It first assesses the threat
posed by China, addressing such issues as military capability, Taiwan, the
trade deficit, human rights and democracy. It then discusses the rationale for
rapprochement between the two countries in order to achieve a stable peace. It
makes the case for a fundamental shift in U.S. policy and efforts by both
countries to increase their cooperation. It analyzes the benefits to the United
States of this policy shift along with the potential impact on Japan, Taiwan,
and both Koreas.

This significant work on U.S.-China relations will be an
essential resource for the academic and policy community as well as of interest
to the general reader on a topic of great public concern.

Table Of Contents

1. Introduction: The Unfulfilled Promise of U.S.-China Relations

2. The Real Military Balance

3. Rapprochement and a Stable Peace

4. China's Economic Juggernaut

5. Democracy and Human Rights in China

6. The "Soft Power" of China's Foreign Policy

7. Getting It Right: A New Framework Agreement for U.S.-China
Relations

“The China Fallacy is essential reading for anyone who wants to
understand American policy toward China. Its thoughtful recommendations on
improving U.S.-China relations should be weighed seriously by all concerned
with the impact of China's rise.” –
Samuel R. Berger, United States National Security Advisor, under
President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001

“Understanding the complexity, risk and opportunity of China's
rise will drive American opinions and policy making well into the 21st century.
This book makes an important contribution to that end.” – John Huntsman, former United States
Ambassador to China

Donald Gross. The China
Fallacy: How the U.S. Can Benefit from China's Rise and Avoid Another Cold War.
New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. Rev. by

Kai Chen
in Peace
and Change 10/2014; 39(4). DOI: 10.1111/pech.12093. [“Gross’s main argument is to criticize the
fallacy that ‘China’s rise is occurring at the expense of the United
States.’” My 14 newsletters support
the argument, citing evidence and arguments of the US threat to China. I
haven’t read the book yet. –Dick]

Nick Turse | The Outpost That Doesn't Exist in the Country You
Can't Locate

Nick Turse, TomDispatch, Reader Supported
News, Nov.
23, 2014.
Turse writes: "Admit it. You don’t know where Chad is. You know it’s in
Africa, of course. But beyond that? Maybe with a map of the continent and by
some process of elimination you could come close. But you’d probably pick Sudan
or maybe the Central African Republic. Here’s a tip. In the future, choose that
vast, arid swath of land just below Libya."READ MORE